Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural. I don't own Sam, Dean, Bobby, etc. Don't sue; it's all in good fun

Chapter 3

Caution Versus Paranoia

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Laura leaned against the wall of the diner, like she so often did, and watched the two men walk away.I hate my job, she thought. There were always pigheaded men who hit on the waitresses; very few gentlemen ate at Perry's Diner. She tended to ignore them, but occasionally Laura couldn't hold back. She closed her eyes and continued to smoke her cigarette. It wasn't her break time, and any minute, Derek would waddle outside to find her and give her an earful. It was three o'clock and in and hour and a half, her shift would be over and then she could go home. She silently prayed she wouldn't have a bartend at the club that night.

Then right on time, "Laura! What the fuck are you doing?!" Derek found her.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she dropped her cigarette on the pavement and stepped it out as she went inside.

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After driving around for fifteen minutes or so, Sam and Dean found a parking garage about three blocks from the apartment complex. The brothers hugged their coats close as they walked quickly toward the entrance. The complex was made up of four separate buildings, two were nine stories high and two were five. The lot was large and fenced in. Each building sat in a corner, with a courtyard in the middle. The Milton Apartment Complex could have been a nice place to live, but it was smack in the middle of the bad side of Brooklyn, and the landlord didn't give two shits if the place looked like a homeless shelter or the Ritz. Sam walked in first; he swung the door wide, allowing Dean to catch it and walk in after.

"Jesus Christ," said Dean, "What a shit hole."

"It's not that bad."

"Yes, yes it is." He looked around the lobby. If it could be called a lobby, it was just a big empty room with an elevator, access to the staircase, and a hallway probably leading to the first floor apartments. The paint was chipping, the plaster was cracked and the floor was so scuffed and dirty, Dean couldn't tell if it was linoleum or wood. Sam headed for the elevator and hit the button. They waited a few seconds and the doors opened. Dean hit the nine button as they stepped inside and after the doors closed, the elevator gave a disconcerting lurch. "I think I hate this elevator." Dean stood in the corner and held on to the walls. The elevator lurched again and Dean shifted uncomfortably. It soon stopped and the doors opened.

"Apartment 979, which, I think is this way," Sam pointed to the left. They walked past the doors, watching the numbers ascend until they stood in front of apartment 979. "Lockpick?"

Dean dug around in his pocket, "Here," he handed them to Sam.

Sam knelt down and inserted the two thin metal picks into the lock. He twisted, jiggled, and poked around till he heard a satisfying click as Dean stood there with his hands in his pockets. Sam pushed the door open.

"And I thought the lobby was bad…" said Dean.

"Yeah, it could use a little fixing up."

"That's an understatement."

The door opened up to a small living room and the first thing they saw was an ugly couch with a scratched coffee facing a small television on the in the middle of the room. The walls were an awful color that was not dissimilar to coffee mixed with mustard, in some places the dry wall had fallen away, revealing the brick underneath. There was a table in the far right corner with a laptop and iPod and littered with paper. Shelves, haphazardly stuffed with books, lined the wall behind the table and a tattered old office chair had been rolled under it, besides the sofa, the chair was the only other seating in the room. There were several ashtrays throughout the small apartment filling it with the unmistakable smell of stale cigarettes.

"Well, I guess she doesn't like company," said Dean.

A miniscule kitchen sat behind the living room, the only divider being where the carpet in the living room ended and linoleum in the kitchen began. Together, the whole room, including the kitchen, was only thirteen by fifteen feet. There was a single door leading to an even smaller bedroom.

"You search the front room, I'll take the bedroom," said Dean.

"Whatever."

"Sweet."

Sam stood in front of the room and looked around. He decided to start with table, he opened the laptop and turned it on. As he let it boot up he poked around the papers. For the most part, they weren't that interesting. They were mostly drawings and doodles. The computer wasn't password protected and it didn't take Sam very long to scan through her documents. There wasn't much on the computer but music. She didn't have much in the way of emails either. She had no saved emails and no names in her online address book. There was some spam in her inbox but from the looks of her email account, she wasn't in contact with many people. He shut down the computer and moved on to the kitchen.

Dean hadn't found anything incriminating or anything remotely interesting, except for her underwear drawer, of course.

There wasn't anything particularly strange about her refrigerator or in her oven or in her cupboards. There were a few empty liquor bottles on her counter but it was hardly worth mentioning. Sam opened her microwave and her drawers. But it wasn't until he picked up her kettle to move it, did he notice anything odd. When he lifted the kettle, something heavy scraped the inside. He pried off the lid.

"Hey Dean, look what I found."

Dean stuck his head out he door, "What?"

"Gun."

"Gun?" asked Dean.

"Gun. A loaded .38 snub-nosed revolver. It was in the kettle."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. She must not drink a lot of tea." Sam carefully reached in and pulled out a small hand gun and handed it to Dean.

"It's interesting, but that doesn't mean this is our kind of gig." Dean turned the gun over in his hands and inspected it. Then he handed it back to Sam.

"Yeah I know, what about you? Find anything?"

"Apart from a leopard print thong and matching bra, that I would love to see her in… No, I got nothing."

"Get your hands out of her underwear drawer and look harder, please."

Dean shrugged and went back to the bedroom. He looked under the bed, and besides a few shoes and some lint, there was nothing worth mentioning. He stood up and moved on to the closet. The closet was small and had no door, just a ratty old curtain. Shoes and hats covered the floor. He sorted through her closet and he found a few outfits that might make a stripper blush, but mostly just clothes. He looked up and saw a box sitting on the one and only shelf in the closet. He reached up and lugged it down and put it on the bed.

"Hey Sammy."

"You find anything?"

"Not sure, I found a box in her closet. It's full of a lot of stuff, come help me look through it." Dean opened the box and dumped it on the bed.

"Dude," said Sam as he saw, "You're making a mess."

"I'll put it back."

Sam just rolled his eyes. The box was full of newspaper clippings, high school yearbooks, stacks of baby pictures and family photos, and other personal trinkets. "Most of the clippings are about her mother's murder. Here's the first printed story, the obituary, a follow up to the original report, on and on and on. She must have clipped every article."

Dean flipped through the yearbooks and started on the stacks of pictures. Sam was still looking at the news paper articles.

"Here, help me with these," Dean handed Sam some of the pictures.

"Yeah, sure." Sam took the offered photos and started flipping through them.

"Wait a second," said Dean as he stared at one of the pictures.

"What?"

"Sonuvabitch," muttered Dean, "Sam, I think you were right."

"Dean, what is it?"

"Look, you may not recognize him, you were young, but that's Joe Lydon." Dean was looking at a family portrait photograph of a man and a woman and two little girls.

"I'm sorry, who?"

"Joe Lydon. I was eleven or twelve and you would have been about seven. He was a hunter."

"A hunter?"

"Yeah, he died years ago. We went to his funeral in Indiana."

"We did?"

"Don't you remember? Dad was finishing a job in Minnesota when he got a call from Pastor Jim," Dean sat back on the bed, "Jim called to tell him that Joe had died and then we drove all night to Indiana so that Dad could be at the funeral." Dean watched the realization hit Sam. "And do you remember the wake, after the service? The little girl?"

"Oh my God, do you think it's the same girl?" asked Sam.

"Yes, I do. I recognized the last name but I couldn't place it until now."

"Do you think she knows about her father?"

"Dunno, I think we should call Bobby and then we should talk to Laura or Lynn, or whatever the Hell her name is."

"Alright, keep the photo, but put everything back the way you found it," said Sam.

"Thank you, but I have done this before."

"Okay, you finish up in here, I'm gonna finish up in the living room." Now that they had something specific to look for, they knew where to look.

Dean moved onto her dresser. There were a few knick-knacks and a jewelry box that didn't hold much jewelry, except a very interesting necklace. He had already thoroughly searched her underwear drawer. He dug around in a drawer filled with pajamas and his hand brushed something hard. And he reached down. "Sammy," he said.

"What?"

"Gun."

Sam peered into the bedroom. "Gun?"

"A loaded Beretta M9 to be specific. Good choice, too, I believe we have one in the trunk."

"What the Hell?"

"Oh, and I'm not finished," said Dean he reached in again and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. He dangled them on one finger. "You know, I think I'm starting to like this girl."

"Two guns and a pair of handcuffs? What is this girl up to?"

"But wait, there's more," said Dean in his best television announcer voice, "Look under her pillow."

Sam lifted up her pillow to find a meat cleaver. "Are you serious?"

"Yup. And that's not all. In her jewelry box, there's and iron pendant on a chain." Dean picked it up, "Well, I'm pretty sure it's consecrated iron, and the pendent itself is a pretty powerful protection charm."

"Why isn't she wearing it?"

"Well, let's assume, she doesn't know what her father used to do, she probably doesn't even know what it is."

Sam looked at his watch, it was almost four. "Dean, we should probably leave, we don't know when her shift ends."

"Yeah, okay, lemme just put this stuff back. Oh, and I found her stash."

"What?"

Dean held up a little baggy full of pot.

Sam rolled his eyes. "Put that back, Dean. We gotta go."

"Yeah, yeah."

They quickly put everything back the way they found it and began to leave.

"When do you wanna call Bobby?" asked Dean.

"As soon as possible," replied Sam.

"We should find that bar she works at and go talk to her." Dean closed the door behind him.

"Our best bet is to call Bobby first. We don't know what she knows. There's a good chance she has no clue who her father was. And then she's going to think we're just crazy. And what about the weapons?" asked Sam as they stepped into the elevator.

"What about them? In this city, she's just being cautious."

"Cautious is a can of pepper spray and a baseball bat. Two guns, a pair of handcuffs, and a meat cleaver is paranoia."

"I don't know if those handcuffs were necessarily for self defense…." Dean said with a waggle of his eyebrows.

They walked through the lobby and out the door.

"Get your mind out of the gutter,"

"Never."

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[A/N: here is chapter 3, and it's up by Sunday. yay me. please r/r, I'd really appreciate it. Expect the next chapter in a few days or so.